Beware of Pity

by Stefan Zweig

One should not always let the wish be father to the thought, I protested with some firmness.

It always demands a far greater degree of courage for an individual to oppose an organized movement than to let himself be carried along with the stream—individual courage, that is, a variety of courage that is dying out in these times of progressive organization and mechanization.

It’s a very odd story, and yet it may serve to show that courage is often nothing but inverted weakness.

It is never until one realizes that one means something to others that one feels there is any point or purpose in one’s own existence.

Long protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid, but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged endlessly.

For the first time I began to perceive that true sympathy cannot be switched on and off like an electric current, that anyone who identifies himself with the fate of another is robbed to some extent of his own freedom.

Those whom Fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable forever afterwards.’

For the heart is able to bury deep and well what it urgently desires to forget.

But ever since that moment I have realized afresh that no guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.